Saturday, 26 April 2008

So I met this guy, right, and I was like, What do you do? and he was like, I'm a plant geneticist specialising in salad greens and I'm all like, Dude get over yourself, I mean it's hardly rocket science.

Thursday, 17 April 2008

You've probably seen this story by now, about the mother who let her nine-year-old take the NYC subway home alone. She's taken some flak, but I applaud her. Kids today are way too pampered. In my day we were let loose from dawn to dusk etc. Some time ago I created this map of my childhood realm.

Of course, having said that, the particular situation we're in makes the level of surveillance and vigilance we exercise on our own children exactly appropriate. Too bad, but that's the way it is. Everyone else needs to let their kids run free, however.

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News asked Barack Obama about prosecuting officials of the Bush Administration for possible crimes committed in the Bush years. This is his answer:

What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that's already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can't prejudge that because we don't have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You're also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve.

So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment -- I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General -- having pursued, having looked at what's out there right now -- are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it's important-- one of the things we've got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing betyween really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I've said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law -- and I think that's roughly how I would look at it.

Tuesday, 15 April 2008

I usually like The Presurfer because Gerard takes the trouble to look out stuff you may not have seen in every venue on the blogosphere, and mostly without overt editorialising.

However I take exception to this post, which I found to be juvenile, cruel, gratuitous, vicious, discriminatory and quite contrary to the spirit of his blog. Many commenters agreed, and his response was to "get a sense of humour".

I don't know about you, but I get my humour elsewhere than from laughing at people who've done nothing to anyone. I don't kick crips, I don't trip up blind dudes, I don't mock Downies, so call me fuddy-duddy. If you think I'm wrong, feel free to say so in comments.

If not, I think it might be appropriate for me to recruit peeps to go to that post, let Gerard know what your thoughts are on his ill-considered post, then by all means stay and read the rest, because apart from one aberration, it's a very entertaining blog.

PROOFING"Those are fools who do not proof." Digital data are human invisible ones, ergo they has to be proofed. The wide variety of used software, color management, drivers and settings is such a big range, nobody can be experienced enough to estimate the concrete result of a digital workflow process. Only a proof can be the ceckpoint in between, between prepress and print. Although proof itsself is an complicate technical area this difficulties are no excuse to avoid an frequently used proofing through the whole workflow chain.

It never occurred to me that someone might think that the re-enactments were not re-enactments at all, but honest-to-God vérité footage shot while the crime was happening. It’s crazy for someone to think I had just happened to be out on that roadway, that night, with a 35-millimeter film crew and many, many cameras – cameras taking multiple angles, high angles from overhead, low angles at tire-level looking under the car, even angles inside the suspect vehicle. How could anyone think that? How could anyone believe that? Of course, people believe some pretty amazing things, and it made me think: is it a legitimate question? How do we know what is real and what is re-enacted in a photograph? What is real and what is a simulacrum? It’s a question about images. How do we know what is happening for the first time and what is a re-enactment of an event? In a photograph or in a movie? How do we know it hasn’t been doctored or altered to deceive us about the “reality” we imagine we are observing?

Saturday, 12 April 2008

Looking to honor the forty-third President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, the recently formed Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is looking to change the name of the Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Facility. It seems the group would like to rename the SF Zoo adjacent facility to the "George W Bush Sewage Plant."

Image via WikipediaA bit of a change this week, as instead of looking at my own local weekend supplements, I've been trawling through the archives of the Wine Spectator's What Am I Tasting? feature, which has produced a magnificent harvest for one week. Bear in mind all the terms we've encountered so far, some 140 in all, have been left out to avoid duplication. And that's only one year of the archive. So lots more plundering to come, I hope.

Another point about the source: these terms are all as used, and for once haven't been translated by me from another language.

And a general point: the WS goes further than the Flemish press, towards the sort of territory often parodied when wine-writers are being mocked. But ask yourself this: how many of these terms do I not understand? How many of them are inappropriate to a description of taste (whether or not they're appropriate to a description of a particular taste)? Okay, words like tar, flint or tobacco may not sound very delicious, but they do, I think, convey something about a taste which you could at least imagine.

The only one that kind of stumped me was 'sanguine'. What did he mean, blood? If so, it makes sense, though it's funny how we usually convey the taste of blood by reference to another material -- metal. So then how far is 'sanguine' from 'iron'? Perhaps we'd need to have the glasses in front of us to know for sure.

I'll be going back to the WS well in weeks to come, as well as catching up with my usual sources in between. At some point I'll post the full cumulative list, which I'm also updating and keeping in alphamabetical order. If anyone wants a copy, just let me know.

According to Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, Topinamboo is the name of a province in Brazil, used by the satirist (together with Lapland) to signify wilderness, remoteness and so on. There is also a tribe of the same name, also known as the Tupinambas.

Topinambour, meanwhile, is the French name for the Helianthus tuberosus, which our cold maids do Jerusalem artichoke call them. Here's what they look like:

It's not clear why the French should have got it so wrong. The tubers were originally sent back to France by the explorer Samuel de Champlain (founder of Quebec City, and the man for whom Lake Champlain is named) in about 1605, from the area now known as Cape Cod, in I believe Massachusetts. He noted that the flavour of the unprepossessing root was similar to the artichoke, but the French name does not reflect that (nor does the alternative poire de terre, or earth-pear, by allusion to pomme de terre, or potato).

As that suggests, the Jerusalem artichoke comes from neither Brazil nor Jerusalem, but from North America. The name in English is a corruption of girasole, from girare, to turn, and sole, the Sun. In fact the tuber is a relative of the sunflower, called girasole in Italian, which as you probably know turns its face constantly towards the Sun.

Hence the other names for the Jerusalem artichoke: sunroot or sunchoke. The same derivation gives us heliotrope, which also means "turn towards the Sun". Helianthus means simply sun + flower.

The English name artichoke, incidentally, has links to the names chard (or cardoon), the French for thistle (chardon), cactus, and the fruit known as tuna grown in Sicily and elsewhere. The choke part of the word is thought to be related to the Italian for 'stump' (ciocco) or to the fact that the central core is hairy and inedible, but that seems unlikely.

*obviously the Jerusalem artichoke is not a fruit. But interesting tuber might have been slightly off-putting.

Thursday, 10 April 2008

Not much you can quibble with, really. Apart from Dave Pelzer, who should not be there. And Lynne Truss. I mean come on, they're listing Thucydides and Proust, Diderot and Blake. Who needs Lynne Truss? Nice they have a crime and a romance section, which allows in The Maltese Falcon and Tess of the d'Urbervilles. They should probably have included plays, and criticism, and more non-fiction in general. Everybody needs to have a bit of Oliver Sacks, Gombrich's History of Art, Bertrand Russell and GBS on music. And where was Borges? Throw 100 Years out and let the master in.

Tuesday, 8 April 2008

Nir Rosen has reported extensively from Iraq, and not only from hotel bars in the Green Zone. He knows what he's talking about. That's why the US congress invited him to give it the benefit of his experience.

This is what he told them. It may come as a shock to some people: the idea of a journalist not sucking up to the regime, but coming to his own conclusions based on (gasp!) first-hand evidence. Who ever heard of such a thing?

Monday, 7 April 2008

I sometimes say "muscles" so that the 'c' has a 'k' sound (the same way the cartoon character Popeye says it), computor instead of "computer" (after Ned Beatty's exaggerated pronunciation of "Mr Luthor" in the Superman movies), and I occasionally say benimber instead of "remember" because it was something my cousin Paul said more than 20 years ago.

Don't miss the excellent comments tail. This is something I do all the time. Far too many examples to list. A product, perhaps, of speaking and hearing foreign languages all day every day. Though kottke has so many people who do it too. It must just be something peeps do.

Wednesday, 2 April 2008

Sometime in February, 1708 an almanac went on sale in London titled Predictions for the Year 1708 by Isaac Bickerstaff. This almanac lay the groundwork for an elaborate April Fool's Day prank that was perpetrated upon one of England's leading astrologers.

Total pwnage in an 18th century April Fool trick. Read to the end to discover the Bounder's true Identitie!

As implied by the title, this collection probes deeply into Wagner's vast Ring piece. Accusations of anti-semitism make Wagner's Ring a sensitive area today, but it continues to offer pleasure to many. This is a masterful work of musical scholarship that deserves a place on any sturdy shelf. No doubt it will influence appreciation of Wagner's Ring for many years to come. Among the highlights is the revealing chapter on the many characters than Wagner has managed to cram into his Ring. Also covered are the brass instruments that Wagner designed specifically for insertion within the Ring. There will always be those who are opposed to musical analysis (just the same as there will always be those who resort to juvenile humour, regarding the title). They will say that Wagner's Ring is 'violated' with excessive force of scholarship. For this reviewer, however, Wagner's Ring remains quite intact and is indeed tightened by the exploration. In short, this stimulating venture in and out of Wagner's Ring has resulted in a seminal, fluid output.

layers of cedar and raspberry strike a sharp upfront note, while clove and creamy notes add body while contributing an exotic, sumptuous character that conveys luxury in its essence. Might there also be a trace of rubber, though?

And then there’s B, with

its aroma of underripe bananas, and the way the fruitiness opens up on my tongue with a flick of bitterness that quickly fades to reveal lush, grassy tones.

These are descriptions of, respectively, a chocolate, an olive oil, and a perfume, but you couldn’t possibly guess that. I’ve never caught traces of red fruit in a dark chocolate, I don’t even know what neroli is, and, as for underripe bananas in olive oil, I’m more likely to catch the Sundance Kid in Bolivia. That doesn’t mean that the people who can taste these things are bluffing; rather, they have a vocabulary of specific sense references that I haven’t acquired. (To complicate matters, sometimes these people actually are bluffing.) There is a loss involved in learning about taste: as you gain a more detailed and precise vocabulary, you risk talking to fewer and fewer people—the people who know what these taste references mean. As your vocabulary becomes more specific, more useful, it also becomes less inclusive.

John Lanchester, restaurant critic and author of The Debt to Pleasure, considers our recent series of Tasting Notes, or something like it.

“If someone comes into my office wearing perfume or with a strong shampoo or laundry soap smell, I have to ask them to leave,” she says. “On occasion, I’ve made people wear a garbage bag over their clothes because the detergent smell was so fierce I couldn’t endure it.”

Tuesday, 1 April 2008

Among all the million musical moments on YouTube at the moment, Dury singing this amazing song is probably the single most exciting thing. I tune in half a dozen times a day, wondering what I have to do to make my words even half that good.

This sombre series of portraits taken of people before and after they had died is a challenging and poignant study. The work by German photographer Walter Schels and his partner Beate Lakotta, who recorded interviews with the subjects in their final days, reveals much about dying - and living. Life Before Death is at the Wellcome Collection from April 9-May 18